Volume 7 will be the last penultimate(?) Flight (at least in its current incarnation). Volume 1 came out in July of 2004, only six years ago, so I might be overreaching to tag this with “Comics History,” but it feels that way to me.

One of my favorite memories of Comic-Con 2004 was when the boxes of Volume 1 arrived at the Flight booth and I ran over from our funky, inflatable furniture-filled booth nearby, in time to see them opening the first one with a box cutter.

I asked if I could buy the first copy. Someone (probably Kazu himself) offered to give me a copy since I’d written an afterword, but I said Hell No, I wanted to buy the thing and insisted on giving them a twenty.

Nobody cares who gets the first “comp copy.” I wanted to be Flight’s first paying customer, and so I was.

A small moment in comics history, maybe, but one I’ll always remember fondly.

I was waiting to mention this, because I knew that Tom Spurgeon would have the best write-up on the late master and he does.

Only met the man a few times. We travelled in different circles. But he seemed kind and charming and his talent was self-evident.

Combined with the recent passing of Frazetta, expect the phrase “end of an era” to come up a lot—and not without justification.

Meanwhile…

In other news, just a quick note for those of you who were intrigued by my write-up of the Legendary Brian Dewan and his filmstrips a while back, to let you know that Brian will be performing at Los Angeles’ equally legendary Museum of Jurassic Technology on June 25 and 26 in their teeny tiny theater.

Battle-scarred freelance veteran and CCS teacher Steve Bissette has been posting his remembrances of some “Forgotten Comics Wars” over at his blog. It’s a fascinating series covering debates that were raging during the years I was just entering the business.

Since the series took the form of scattered blog posts, Mark Evanier has done us all the favor of collecting the links for all 12 parts and offers his own commentary here.

Tom has a comprehensive report, but I just wanted to add that I liked the man when I was a production peon at DC Comics in 1982-83, and I could tell that many of DC’s better moves at the time owed a debt to Dick Giordano’s better instincts.

For American mainstream comics fans born in the early ’70s, it seems that the answer is a resounding “yes!” This silent issue of G.I. Joe (a series my crowd dismissed as a forgettable toy tie-in comic) by Larry Hama was apparently an important moment in the young lives of future (male?) comics artists of the generation a decade after mine.

I think it was Larry Marder who first directed my attention to this weird phenomenon, but the wise and witty Shaenon Garrity has now penned the definitive write-up (with a cameo by Your Truly in the role of Mary Poppins).

I saw Shaenon and Andrew Farago last week before hopping my flight home from San Francisco, when I realized that my UX Week hotel was just three blocks from the Cartoon Art Museum where Andrew works.

Be sure to check out Shaenon’s own new book collecting the first run of her great new strip Skin Horse.